UNITED STATES:PRESIDENT GEORGE Bush's plans to tackle the troubled US economy are "completely divorced from reality", Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said yesterday.
In a major speech on the economy in New York, Mr Obama said American families felt as though the economy had been in recession for years and called for regulation of the country's financial markets to be modernised.
He also attacked his rival John McCain as he described the Republican's economic plan as "little more than watching this crisis happen".
Mr Obama told several hundred invited people at the Cooper Union in Manhattan: "Our economy is in recession. To renew our economy, and to ensure we're not doomed to repeat a cycle of bubble and bust again and again and again, we need to address not only the immediate crisis in the housing market, we also need to create a 21st century regulatory framework, and pursue a bold opportunity agenda for the American people."
He said that change would not be easy and added: "I will not pretend that this will come without cost." But he said the changes could be made in a fiscally responsible way and he would not be running for president "if I didn't think that this was a defining moment in our history".
Meanwhile, top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton's campaign have reproached the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, the country's senior Democratic politician, for suggesting that Democratic superdelegates should back the candidate with the most pledged delegates. They urged her to respect the right of those delegates to back whomever they choose at the end of the primary season.
The criticism represented the latest effort by Clinton's campaign and its allies to beat back talk that Barack Obama had amassed enough of a lead in pledged delegates that she would be unable to overtake him, and arguments that a continuation of the conflict between the two candidates will ultimately hurt the party and help John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Arguing that neither Mr Obama nor Ms Clinton will have amassed the necessary 2,024 delegates needed to win the nomination by the time the primary season ends in June, the fundraisers urged Ms Pelosi "to clarify your position on superdelegates and reflect in your comments a more open view to the optional independent actions of each of the delegates at the national convention in August."
Ms Pelosi's spokesman Brendan Daly said that the speaker's position had not changed. She has not endorsed either candidate.
- (Reuters, Washington Post service)